Grog and grub with me mateys in Cascais

I got my personal introduction to NFTs last night over pizza in Portugal. WTF? I'm still not sure what to do with this thing I minted, nor even how to download it (if this is possible), but it was a fun bit of madness in the second (or maybe third, I'll know better when the hangover clears) of these gatherings I've attended.

They say you should keep your friends close, and your enemies closer. Well, from one perspective that makes LocLunch the perfect social opportunity for our strange times in the language service professions. I had excellent chats with someone well placed in a company that is too often the epitome of Evil Trashlation... and her Russian friend, of course. And Brazilians galore, oh my, those awful people who come to Portugal to steal all the good Catholic men and women from their sanctioned wedlocks and -chains. And I saw that the tradition of German intrigue in Portugal is alive and well maintained by the organizer of last night's event, the energetic entrepreneur Jan Hinrichs, who recently moved his family and headquarters from Madrid (where the Spanish government has lost its business plot) to this, Nossa Senhora's sacred country. Who further undermined our moral defenses with the suggestion that we all get some ice cream nearby before dispersing to our scattered night shelters.

I am thoroughly compromised by those two scoops of mango and third scoop of maracuja. And by the kindness of the Russian fellow who saved me from a dodgy midnight train connection and got me home safely to Benfica.

And though the table was well occupied by those who make their own rules and view the conventional trashlation sector "wisdom" with a jaundiced eye, they followed the the LocLunch Basic Rules very well. This is a social thing, not a fucking sales event. Damn. I had my elevator speech all prepared....

Where'er ye may dwell, whate'ever seas ye may sail, matey, whene'er in port or Porto, join the motley crew of LocLunch for some fine grog and grub with all cutlasses sleeping peacefuçlly in thar scabbards.

 

Flirting with a Fiverr & more

If you always want to get paid...

Payment practices are a perpetual pain in Trashlation World. What professional translator or interpreter has not, at some point, faced difficulty getting paid for work delivered. Or in my case, consultant, independent solution developer and instructor, since I retired from translation three months ago and no longer accept such tasks in the increasingly thankless environment where they are requested.

Net never has become the modus operandi of too many wankers in the NMT-AI-MOUSE Fanboy and -gurl Klub, and when B of A, Barclays, Santander of some other clan of thieves fails to provide the desired credit for the Incredible Journey to Ruin, there will always be those AI Artists Formerly Known as Trashlators who understand that in matter of money, all that really matters is mindset.

Fuck you. Pay me. Well, imagine getting paid! Isn't that exciting? Fuck you. Pay me. I'm more excited by the structure of your fucking kneecaps and how fragile it is... SET YOUR MIND TO PAY ME.

But wait, Paulie, there may be a better way!

A perpetually solvent friend who owns a couple of German service companies once shared his secret: when in doubt, demand payment in advance. When there is no doubt, demand double. But what if the prospect just walks away? Offer them a peck on the check and hold the door for them in gratitude for the grief they are about to save you.

Times are hard. But payment practices are, alas, too often limp. Like a little mushroom past its sell-by date and full of mold and other things best not named.

I'm personally fortunate not to deal with many deadbeats; avoiding business with Italian and American companies certainly helps. Well, I have a soft spot for the Portuguese, but let's not go there.

I have another problem. I had administrative work even more than I hate not getting paid, and since I acquired a retired surgeon as a billing assistant and, at about the same time, took on a new role as a trainer for incoherent billing software like SAGE, not getting paid has been a source of surprising pleasure. But our five dogs still demand food, and if it does come in bags and come on time, well... there is that extra weight I'm carrying, the Portuguese pit bull is fond of reminding me.

And I am sure that many clients and friends and friends with the misfortune to be clients keep a special dartboard with my face on it for those times I get around to writing the bill after a year of so.

Fuck you. Pay me. Well fuck you. Write the fucking bill. Yeah, right, you tell me again how all that works here in Portugal where the tax laws are so screwy that almost none of the invoicing tools typically used by translators, companies involved with language services (regardless of whether they actually provide any) in other countries are compliant with Portuguese tax law, so I often feel myself well and truly fucked.

Enter the performance platforms such as Fiverr, which I am beginning to consider for certain recurring requests where I have asked Dios for a better intake process in which people tell me exactly what they need, provide the means of doing that, including the money to pay for the electricity to drive the tools I use to reach their goal and, well, just let me get on with it and make something nice and bless them for a change.

I started toying with platformed pre-payment about four years ago, when I started using Teachable as a way to demonstrate to memoQ and others how professional tools instruction could be improved and content could be shaped in more useful ways. I may not have been successful in convincing others to Do the Right Thing, but now that I have more time on my hands and have resigned myself to take a shot at that myself and maybe actually charge for all that knowledge that so many people mint money with, I am really, really glad that the Portuguese tax mysteries are handled in a way that does not involve me at all and is completely correct. No more constant special requests for special invoices for special people in special countries and special claims on my non-existent admin time.

So, that's the news, I guess. Next time you need a training video, a dash of regex for your project soup, a magical mysterious import filter for Formats Unknown or the like, there's a process. And it's not "fuck you". That's between consenting buyers and the platforms from which they draw their services....

Say something, I'm using memoQ!

It's a reasonable approximation of reality to say that no good deed goes unpunished, and that can certainly be said for the team of software artists formerly known as Kilgray. The groundlings have little idea of how very concerned the machine is to deliver the right god in communion for our times. No sausage from the golden Trados calf, no. no. The right Phrase is everything, and to delve the source of Memory for this revelation is Our Life's Work.

The ways of the Great CAT who art in Hungary are a mystery, and those lacking Faith are taken aback at a lack of transparency. But I, faithful in my productivity pilgrimage, brought my offering to the High Priest in the temple. 

It was the Time of Offerings, of intelligence sacrificed to artificialities, offerings burnt before an MT God. Ours is a Merciful One, and yea though I walk slowly, very slowly through the Valley of Technical Debt I fear no loss of data, for I am not a user of Trados nor of Wordfast. In Orange Ecstasy I linger, savoring the gentle crush of bugs between my gnashing teeth.

Initiated in the Mysteries I am, the Nine to One of the mighty dollars, flowing like a river of corporate honey or puddling as piss in a petty pool on the commons. 

But our Holy Ground needs a good charge of urea to grow the next best thing, so pay all ye faithful for your SMA renewal before the end of September, when there shall be Weeping and Gnashing of Teeth as the price of memoQ and its servicre and maintenance contract increase by a modest 20% for the nifty Translator Pro version.

And fear not, for I am with you. My rod and staff are needed in the garden to prop up an apple tree, but I can offer this at least: if you blow the deadline and have to pay an extra €20 or so for the SMA renewal this year after October 1st, evidence of that in the form of a purchase invoice or somesuch which reaches me by the end of 2023 on the hidden paths of e-mail or social media will receive as a blessing a discount "coupon" worth twice and half again that for a stay at the memoQuickies Resource Camp until March 2024.

Or if the high priest ever gets back to me as he said he would, maybe there will be an alternative route. You are all nonetheless blessed that you have in your professional hands a tool, which for all its shortcomings, beats the competition to death if you know how to unlock its power (which few really do).